Pierce Brosnan’s “Love Is All You Need” makes a big impression

Pierce Brosnan made quite an impression at the Venice Film Festival on Sunday, as his latest film, Love Is All You Need, premiered to nice notices.

The influential Hollywood Reporter raved about the European romantic comedy, and Brosnan in particular. “(He) looks dapper, distinguished and more relaxed than he has in a long time, despite playing an uptight workaholic businessman carrying around years of hurt and anger,” the review said.

Brosnan did the press rounds at Venice to promote his project, and told reporters that he’ll always carry the James Bond tag with no regrets. Brosnan played Bond four times and earned hundreds of millions for the franchise before being replaced by current 007 Daniel Craig.

“Bond will follow me for the rest of my days and happily so. I’ve been an actor since the age of 18 and my passion has always been acting, and I was going to act in life with or without James Bond,” he said.

“James Bond was a great gift in my life for which I’ll forever be grateful.”

Love Is All You Need will be released throughout Europe during the next couple of months, and although there is no U.S. release date yet Sony Pictures owns the rights. Brosnan said he loved the script by Oscar winner Susanne Bier from the get-go, and could relate to it on a personal level given that the character he plays is a widow. Brosnan lost his first wife Cassandra Harris to ovarian cancer in 1991.

“The script touches your heart, you fall in love with the words, you fall in love with the character. . . in this particular instance it was so much tied to my life in many ways, having lost a wife to cancer, so I knew something about the grief of life,” Brosnan said.

“So there were many emblems within the story which appealed to me and which I could identify with and then you try to . . . you try not to act too much.”